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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27162154">One of the Team</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenshell/pseuds/Ravenshell'>Ravenshell</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2003), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (TV 2012), Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>13daysofhorror, Cemetery, Ghosts, Headless, Reaper - Freeform, ghost - Freeform, graves, graveyard, skeleton</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:14:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,797</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27162154</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ravenshell/pseuds/Ravenshell</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A case of mistaken identity; Mikey THOUGHT he was guarding the graveyard with his brothers...</p><p>Written for the 13 Days of Horror on devArt.  Day 5's prompt: I thought you were the ghost...? (Kind of the other way around, but...)</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>11</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>One of the Team</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The four of them easily leapt the graveyard fence the graveyard together, Don dressed as a skeleton, Raphael as a grim reaper, Leo as a jack-o-lantern-headed wraith.  Mikey himself had gone for a more humorous look, as a Charlie Brown ghost—a sheet with too many eye-holes cut in it.  Leonardo had complained that he wasn’t going to scare off anyone looking like that, and that was, of course, their main mission for the evening, post-trick-or-treating.  In fact, Leo had complained about Mikey’s creative costuming throughout their early evening’s excursion, noting that he could see patches of green skin, yellow plastron, or brown shell.  So?  Did he think the humans went naked under their costumes?  It was fall in New York… not exactly tropical temperatures at night! Kids surely wore clothes under their costumes, including green ocher, and brown ones. </p><p>“Mikey makes a good point,” Don said, taking his side.  “What looks more suspicious on Halloween to the casual observer, a slightly lumpy ghost under a sheet with different coloration in places, or a fully articulated mutant turtle costume?”</p><p>“We’re s’posed to be stayin’ out of sight during cemetery patrol anyway,” Raph noted.  “Not like anybody’s gonna see ‘im.”</p><p>“Boo-sides,” Mikey added, waving his sheeted arms, “cemeteries are holy ground.  I’m more holey than all of you put together!”</p><p>Leo, with a smirk, had to concede the points, so Charlie Brown Ghost got to stay.  The four of them headed across the grounds casually. </p><p>“Hey…” Mikey muttered to himself.  Something shiny on the ground caught his attention, and he bent to pick it out of the earthen path.  As such, he missed Leo’s hand signal for the brothers to go full stealth, he, Don, and Raph darting behind trees and grave markers and monuments.  “A quarter!” the youngest turtle proclaimed proudly, tucking his find into his belt through one of his convenient sheet-holes.  But as he looked all around, his brothers had all disappeared.  “Guys?”  His stomach dropped; he’d missed a command, and Leo was going to let him hear about it later, he was sure.  “Oh, great…” </p><p>He set off into the rows of headstones, going into stealth mode and darting silently from one to the next as he scouted around for his family members.  He’d covered more than half of the grounds with no sign of them—psh, ninjas—when he finally caught sight of a tattered sheet as it passed a sepulcher, and ran to catch up.</p><p>Rounding a corner into a row of the small tombs, he breathed a sigh of relief.  “<em>There</em> you guys are!”  The headless ghost, reaper, and skeleton turned slowly, smoothly, to glare at him.</p><p>He ducked meekly.  “Oh, right,” he whispered, “stealth mode,” and fell in silently behind them as they glided across the ground. As they moved, Mikey noticed a fourth figure ahead of the rest, in a shimmery, gossamer dress.  Maybe April met up with them, though it didn’t fit her usual style, he thought, and was awfully tall.  Maybe she was wearing heels… he’d heard women looked taller when they wore them.</p><p>Mikey had to admit, he was getting bored an nearly broke the silence, when Raph pointed silently toward a source of ruckus.  A group of four teens, drinking beer and playing with a Ouija board, tossing their empties to the graves around them. </p><p>The group split up, surrounding the interlopers as planned in order to spook them out of the graveyard.  Mikey’s job was sound effects, as he could let out a disturbing moan better than any of his brothers, so he was miffed when the gossamer ghost started in with a wail.  Not to be outdone, Mikey came in over the top of her with a creepy cackle, moved position a few headstones over, and followed that up with a ghastly moan.</p><p>Glancing around nervously, the teenagers packed up their game.  One of them pointed and whispered about seeing something among the graves behind them.  That’d be Donnie, slinking about in his skeleton suit, Mikey figured.  But they were leaving their trash behind, and, as Leo didn’t seem to be speaking up about it, Mikey intoned in his spooky moan voice, “<em>And take your litter with youuu!</em>”</p><p>The teens squeaked and yelped, bumping into one another as they fretted to clean up their mess and then hightailed it toward the gates in an all but blind panic.</p><p>Leo, in his pumpkin-headed ghost costume, leaned out from behind a marble obelisk to peer at him.  Mikey thought he was going to be chastised for laying it on too thick or something—who knew?  Leo was picky—but the pumpkin nodded approvingly instead.  As the group came back together, the banshee figure huffed.  “Well, if you don’t need me for moaning,” she breezed in a voice that sounded airier and gentler than April ever did, “I’ll go whisper around the other hunters over there,” she pointed, and swooped—swooped?—around and over the grounds like a pale mist.</p><p>He was about 75% sure that wasn’t April now.  But if it wasn’t April, who was it?  Mona Lisa wasn’t exactly the gentle, whispery type either…  He shrugged, writing if off for now.  He’d ask later, because they were on the move again, the reaper silently pointing toward a disturbance near the rear wall. </p><p>As they jogged toward their next targets, Mikey came up alongside the skeleton.  “Hey, Don, you were totally right about that costume looking way better in the dark!  It’s almost like I can see straight through you!”  The skeleton canted his skull with questioning eye-sockets.  A few graves away, the leader motioned for everyone to split up.</p><p>“Aw, yeah!” Mikey said enthusiastically, remembering at least to drop his voice to a whisper.  “High three!”  He held one ghostly arm aloft, and the skeleton, looking less than confident, maybe about where to slap for contact due to the sheet, simply held a bony hand up, where Mikey slapped it.  “Cowabunga!” </p><p>As Don took off to do his thing, Mikey started in with the scary wind noises, and a low, creepy laugh. The group of three they were surrounding were a bit older and not about to be swayed by some spooky sounds and costumes.  That meant it was Leo and Raph’s time to shine.  Looming over the miscreants, interrupting their tagging spree, the pumpkin-headed wraith thundered down at them, “<em>BEGONE FROM THIS HALLOWED GROUND, INTERLOPERS!</em>”  Mikey didn’t know the voice modulator Don gave the leader would make his voice so deep!  Really well done!  And then the blue fire the pumpkin burst into when the gang didn’t move… Wow.  He really had to hand it to Donnie and all his science and tech trickery!  His genius was wasted belowground… he totally could do special effects for the movies!</p><p>The teens seemed rooted to the spot, torn between doubting the authenticity of a threat from someone in a costume and caving to the instinct to get the hell out of there, but the deciding factor of the jack-o-lantern ghost throwing his flaming pumpkin head at them as it continued to scream, “<em>AWAY, AWAY, BEGONE, LEST YOUR LIVES BE CLAIMED!</em>” That got the three of them moving.  The reaper leapt down from his perch above a mausoleum to “escort” them off the property, flanking the group and threatening them with his scythe, moving much faster and fluidly than Mikey had ever seen his bulky brother go.  And he hadn’t known Raph even brought a scythe to go with his costume.</p><p>The headless wraith reclaimed his shattered pumpkin, which sprang back together as if never busted, and pursued the group, calling, “<em>COME</em>,” to him as he passed.  Mikey did as he was told, afraid of disobeying. </p><p>The skeleton charged at them from behind another tomb with a cackling scream, clawing its way along the ground with inhuman speed, and threw his skull, followed by an arm and a femur at the trespassers, who were now openly screaming and crying as they ran.</p><p>He was sure now that these ghosts weren’t his brothers.  “WoooOOoo…” he wailed halfheartedly to keep up his ruse as a member of the pack of specters.</p><p>The first of the boys hit the holly hedge with a yelp of pain, which escalated to a holler as the second young man piled into him.  As the third smacked into them, the hedge broke and the three toppled free, regained their feet, and resumed running, off into the distance.</p><p>The reaper reached the hedge, examining the damage with a sigh.  He took an hourglass from the folds of his cloak, turned it over and shook some sand from it onto the busted hedge, which regrew to its previous fullness.</p><p>As Mikey watched this feat, he realized he was surrounded by the three specters, and felt his bladder try to betray him, which, he supposed, was only the natural response to being faced with real, actual ghosts.  He tried taking a couple ninja-soft steps, hoping to back away without being noticed, but the headless ghost addressed him.  “<em>Young one, you have naught to fear.  We thank you for your assistance in defending our domain.  But perhaps you would be more comfortable with your own people.</em>” </p><p>Mikey gaped beneath his holey sheet, at the same time thinking, ‘Holey Sheet!’  He looked to his right, to see a pumpkin-headed Leo, dark-cloaked Raph, and skeleton-suited Don escorting a girl dressed as a cute ladybug to the gates.</p><p>“<em>We wish you a good Hallows,</em>” the wraith said kindly, and vanished into a fog. </p><p>The reaper tossed a sleeve of his cloak over himself and blended into the darkness so fully he may as well have become it. </p><p>The skeleton, all of his bones back together, gave Mikey a little salute, and began crumbling to dust, the skull issuing a hearty, if dusty, “Cowa-bone-ga!” before disintegrating.</p><p>“Mikey!” Leo called to him.  Mikey looked back and forth between his family and where the entities had been, then dashed over to hide behind his big brother’s shell.</p><p>“Leo, there’s real ghosts here…”</p><p>“Uh huh.  Of course there are.”</p><p>He held back, just until his brothers had assisted the girl in the ladybug costume over the fence.  “I’m telling you guys, there’s real ghosts here!  How come you never see what I see?!”</p><p>“We’re not the ones seein’ things… That pretty much covers it,” Raph said.</p><p>Mikey grumped, following his brothers, uncharacteristically silent, back into the black depths of the graveyard.  Off to one side, out of the corner of his eye, he caught the sparkly, wispy ghost whom he’d inadvertently “filled in” for.</p><p>“Byeeee, sweeetiiiieeee, eeeeeee… Eeeeeee! Ouuuhhhh…” the banshee sang, and he waved a holey arm.</p><p>“Did you guys hear something?” Leo asked, looking around.</p><p>“No.  Nobody heard anything,” Raph said adamantly.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>This is a companion piece to Day 4's Cemetery Shenanigans fic, Grave Guardians.  Day 9's Delusions will be another.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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